Tim Walz's mentorship of a GSA highlights the GOP assault on LGBTQ freedom

In the 1990s, bullied LGBTQ students at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota, approached teacher Tim Walz about forming a Gay-Straight Alliance. His answer was, "absolutely." Students who were part of that GSA, like Jacob Reitan, remember a teacher and coach who "modeled values of inclusivity and respect,” and "showed the bully a better path forward."

The inspiring stories of Walz's mentorship of his students highlight the two paths America could take for its LGBTQ kids in this election: one a warm embrace of freedom and equality, the other a cruel assault on their very humanity.

Walz's students were lucky to have him. At another high school during that same period, bullied students were further attacked for forming a GSA, drawing the attention of a national Christian right organization intent on undermining those values of inclusivity and respect at every turn.

In the mid-2000s, I wrote the first of what turned out to be a series of investigative pieces about Alliance Defending Freedom, at the time called the Alliance Defense Fund. This first story, which was published in 2007, centered on ADF's role in a protracted battle over a GSA at Boyd County High School in Ashland, Kentucky.

A group of local Christian fundamentalists successfully pressured the school to shut down the GSA. The students sued to have it restored. As part of the settlement of the case, the students and school agreed that each year all students would watch a one-hour anti-bullying video, something the local fundamentalist opponents decried as "indoctrination to tear down the Christian view that homosexuality is wrong," and "reverse discrimination."

That's when ADF got involved. They sought to exempt their clients from having to watch the video, claiming it aimed to "change the belief systems of religious students.” (The video actually said, "your religious beliefs are sacred and we’re not trying to influence those," and pointed out that you can retain your religious beliefs without bullying your classmates.)

ADF's position on the anti-bullying video was in line with its overarching strategy that rights for LGBTQ people are in conflict with the religious freedom of right-wing Christians. The organization has consistently used this framework to undermine church-state separation, erode hard-fought gains for LGBTQ equality, and elevate religious freedom rights for anti-LGBTQ Christians above LGBTQ people themselves.

In the roughly twenty years since Tim Walz was a role model for anti-bullying and inclusivity, ADF's power has only grown within the Republican Party, and particularly under Trump.

Among federal judges Trump appointed, several, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, have ties to ADF. While a professor at Notre Dame Law School in the mid-2010s, Barrett was a lecturer at ADF's Blackstone Fellowship, a training program for aspiring Christian lawyers. Faculty were required to agree to a "lexicon" of words and phrases. The lexicon instructed them to use, for example, the phrase “defending biblical, religious principles, convictions,” but not “bigotry, anti-tolerance;” and to use “demands of/by the homosexual legal agenda, demands of/by advocates of homosexual behavior, special privileges,” but not “homosexual/gay rights, hate-crimes legislation, antidiscrimination laws.”

During Trump's first term, ADF's ideas and personnel directly shaped policy on the "freedom" of Christians to discriminate against LGBTQ people, particularly at the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services. His Supreme Court has thoroughly embraced ADF's arguments that Christians who say they object to LGBTQ equality should get special exemptions from complying with anti-discrimination laws. His Supreme Court has even given such exemptions to ADF clients who dubiously claimed to have a business offering wedding services, but never actually launched it. Their "fear" of being "forced" to photograph or make a website for a same-sex wedding was sufficient for the court to give them a special dispensation from civil rights laws that every other (actual) business has to comply with.

ADF is on the advisory board for Project 2025, part of an "unparalleled" coalition, according to a Heritage Foundation press release, that "is systematically preparing for successful conservative governance in our nation’s capital." Trump has clumsily tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but the history of his first term along with the documented mutual embrace between him and the project's leadership show these are just desperate efforts to misdirect voters appalled by what what is inside those 900 pages.

ADF and its compatriots claim they are fighting for Christians' "freedom" to exercise their religious beliefs. Trump's first term and his Supreme Court leave no doubt about what that means for the freedom of LGBTQ people.